Can I Story Your Board?

Slightly quicker, today! I’m too frightened to do anything else: Caryn will come after me with an axe screaming, “Goddamnit, I thought I told you about the one-thousand word limit!”)

Week 4 Pre-Production was very, very enjoyable – the script run downs that Mark did at the computer were not only informative but hil-ar-i-ous. (I’m genuinely positive I sprained something vital around the breathing area.) The Hellboy storyboards were fantastic, as was the King Kong behind the scenes. I am delighted that I managed to find the $3.00 King Kong Pre-Production DVDs, but haven’t gotten to watch them yet. They’re looking at me. Wantonly.

Storyboards from Week 4! Hopefully the roughness is made up in the quantity. They’re hopelessly melodramatic, and contain the Three Stooges, masquerading as Japanese sailors. WARNING: FOLLOW THE NUMBERS VERY, VERY CAREFULLY OR IT MAY LOOK LIKE MONKEY SCRATCH. (As a bonus, ‘Where’s Wally?’ is hiding somewhere within the seven pages.)

Apologies about the scanning – the paper was a bit thin.

Second point of address, the Cowboy Bebop film, ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’. For some deranged reason, I hadn’t watched any of the series since I started animation at university, and after watching the fantastic ‘Jupiter Jazz’ episodes on television, remembered how fantastic it all was. I went through the film for a sound assessment, and am now thoroughly convinced that it has to be one of the best animated films ever made, even one of the best films full-stop. The plot is well-done, the character design is both beautiful and unique, the infamous Yoko Kanno soundtracks are delicious, and the animation blew me away. On the other hand, the interlaced PAL DVD frames did not. There is nothing more irritating than trying to frame-by-frame a film and getting frames bleeding together, not to mention other atrocities.

The fight scenes are unbelievable to go through. Spike, for example, will have a lot of lead up to a punch hitting, and then suddenly, bam! There is a strong connect, coupled with an elongated blur on his fist and it just comes out fantastic. If you’ve ever wondered what the hype about what those looney buggers in Japan are doing on their good days (as opposed to the creepy fan-service programs that come out on the bad), this is certainly it. I give it an extra stamp of approval because it’s the only non-Disney animated my film my father has sat through and genuinely enjoyed – and the only Disney film he’s ever enjoyed is Aladdin, cough, Genie. It’s frustrating watching any Disney films with him, because there is always speculative silence, followed by:
“He looks like Aladdin!”
“She looks exactly like Jasmine!”
Woops, Disney’s identical star-struck protagonists have been caught out. Gotta love ‘em, though.

In a moment of temporary insanity, I went through and screen capped the storyboards for the Vincent and Spike train confrontation. There are quite a few lots of storyboards on the DVD, not to mention concept art and interviews, so it’s worth hoarding in a small corner. I love my baby, yes-I-do.

This is the scene in action, with a few scenes at the beginning – great animation, characters, backgrounds, music, the works. Unfortunately the English-version wasn’t only, but subtitles never hurt anybody. (Double-the-pity because the English version manages to be better than the Japanese version, which is a rare find indeed.) It’s a long scene but incredibly worth it.



The Spike and Electra fight. Reiterating all the points from above, and Electra is incredibly, well, cool.



This is the unbelievable Spike and Vincent fight from the end of the film – unfortunately the entirety of the fight isn’t here, but this is certainly what animation is all about. It’s shorter than the above clips, too. (Even more cool music, stunning backgrounds and just the sheer speed and perspective on the fight. Yum.)For some ungodly reason, the colour is really quite off on this. The actual scene has a warm palate and comes off brilliantly - this is incredibly dark.
EDIT: The damn thing gets out of sink with the audio, too - just mute it half way through.



If the above is too much on the download, condensed video of the Spike-Vincent fight scenes with additional final fight that wasn't in the above clip. Contains spoilers for the end of the film, though.




Geeks ahoy, the new Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core trailer made its way onto the internet. There are a few patches of FMV-quality CG, and I honestly wonder how many animators worked on Sephiroth’s hair alone. (I was watching the behind the scenes of The Incredibles the other day, and the animators and modellers were having heart-attacks over basic hair. They’d be having triple-bypass-surgery at the locks on these crazy buggers.)
There’s some good character animation, Sephiroth, over-done hair animation, Sephiroth, in-game fight scenes, Sephiroth, other oh-so exciting things, and, well, Sephiroth.



[Tra-la, my ICO art book arrived today! I would love to scan the concept art and some of the backgrounds, but it’s rare enough as it is without me tearing into the spine. It proves books are beautiful. Swoon. Hopefully some Shadow of the Colossus concept art is up online, so I’ll get my grubby paws on that.]


EDIT:

I had to. Coming out mid-year, done by MAD HOUSE, which means fabulous animation:



DEVIL MAY CRY: THE (ANIME).

Apparently Morikawa Toshiyuki is voicing Dante. You can see him one-above voicing Sephiroth, aka The Bondage King with Silver Hair.

Week I and II, with the addition of Stacey Vs. Happy Feet. (Round One.)

Dear Peter Beattie,

I didn’t take a four minute shower.

So. There.

Sincerely,
A Disgruntled Australian Citizen In Favour Of Water Parks.

-------------------------------

Week One (Numero Uno):

Stretching my elephant-like memory back a long, long time ago, in a galaxy so close yet so very far away, there were surely many, many fantastic things that occurred. I remember that my chair was bloody uncomfortable, and that I managed to drop a pile of books off my lap. Elegance at its finest.

- Mark surely is the proud owner off the largest concept art collection known to man. It’s also one thing to just own a mere book with pictures, but woe, the books are genuinely good! I’m considering ‘borrowing’ them all and making a fort under the table in 5.29 – I demand human sacrifices and tea at eleven.
- I wasn’t the biggest fan of King Kong at the time that it was released - the only thing I decided about Naomi Watts is that she was frightening in every sense of the word, and I was desperately hoping she’d suffer an untimely demise in the course of the film. Alas, in retrospect, I think I’d love to see it again, and I’m now dying to get my hands on that beautiful book or one of the DVDs – EzyDvd is selling the ‘Production Diaries’ for $2.95 for people who like cheap things, which is approximately 3.5 hours of footage. Not a typo, either. I foresee commandeering my father’s credit card in the near future.
-The Dark Crystal is another one I feel awfully guilty for not have seeing – I didn’t see The Labyrinth until about eight grade, although on that account, the David Bowie fan in me wishes I still hadn’t. (Mirrormask is fantastic, though! Mirrormask!) I can’t believe someone would think to sit down and invent such amazing characters around mathematical equations! I’ve certainly seen that book around a lot over the years, so I’ll have to get my grubby little hands on it.

- The various concept-art talks were certainly interesting. Character backgrounds, societies, objects being relatable to resent day, and the like. I must admit, I now always think of Children of Men for debatably subtle science-fiction scapes – recognisable, yet with twinges of futuristic elements. Brain-scanning, brain-scanning: Joss Whedon’s Firefly/Serenity is another fantastic example, which has such an intriguing society (China/America becoming the first worldly travellers), not to mention the cultures on the planets, the use of horses/guns/various-foodstuffs and Serenity herself. Continuing the trend of Cowboy’s In Space ™, Cowboy Bebop is also an interesting one – still lovin’ that Spike flies a rust-bucket. Quite the comparison is obviously Star Wars, which really just says it all. (I do want a lightsaber, though. That should be an intense class discussion, someday: what sound does a lightsaber really make?)

- The Inn was quite an interesting experience unto itself. The first time I read the story, I honestly began to wonder if there had been a gas leak somewhere in the near vicinity and I was higher than a bunch of monkeys on nitrous oxide. (Sorry, for the sacrilege, Mister Pratchett.) My drawing experience was not the most useful of ones, as the hands are still out of commission more often than not, but I did spend far too long looking at perspectives of dining halls and flicking through The Brother’s Grimm. Another less-food centric inn that I remembered a little too late was the Prancing Pony (?) from the first The Lord of the Rings film. Not necessary within a legitimate timeline, but there were sleeping quarters, a sign in desk, lots of tables and drunk men. Perfect!

- We all know that the dinosaur video was brilliant. What was less brilliant was that I was humming the Jurassic Park theme for about the next week or so. Thank you, Mark, I’ll be sending you my therapy bills.

Week Two: Numero Duo?

Week 2, oddly enough, is less clearer that the first week. The primary aspect I can recall first thing I can remember is Vic flapping about with Nathan Fillion (a legitimate reason to watch Slither). I’m also quite concerned as I can’t seem to find the power-point to do the weekly assessment, and I can’t seem to find anything useful in Google. I’ll print out the scripts anyway and hope that my demise is short, sweet and dramatic.

The speed-painting was horribly, horribly depressing, but I suppose practice makes perfect. (I also have to wonder if the individual who invented that phrase was murdered violently, because the damn thing is just that evil. I’ll give you practice. Duh-duh-duh.) It’s amazing what can be created with experimental layering of colours, not to mention experience.

Going off on an incredible tangent, I have to have my short whinge about scripts in general, and the importance of, as Mark said, having a solid script before one even goes to work on it. For example, I was watching the Men In Black [1] commentary over the holidays, and I was horrified that, throughout filming, they were going through and filming something they didn’t even know the plot of! At one point, they wasted an extra 4.4 million dollars, because they changed the look of Edgar and the last scene in general at the last minute! It’s stupidity! 4.4 million dollars is a rather large amount to be throwing around because the script wasn’t finalised!

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest was even worse than this. From what I remember, they were filming scenes from the third film without the second even been finished. There was nearly two hours on the DVD with the writers and the directors whinging about this – I do realise the film-politics can be a bother, especially if the studio wants the film out by a certain time, but what happened to quality? I must admit, I did enjoy DMC, but it was drawn-out and gratuitous at times – Cannibal Island, whilst containing this poetic irony that the writers are rather fond of for various plot-points in the third film, was far too long. It was beyond far too long. There was a good half-an-hour where the narrative just found a nice little whole and put up camp for the night. Still there, most likely.

The following is cheap, cheap shot. No excuses from this end.

Happy Feet, I personally think suffers from the above syndrome, as many of the problems in the film could have been fixed with a bit of common-sense, a scriptwriting class, and a few gallons of the drink, is just as down-right dodgy as it doesn’t even know what film it is trying to make! The older sibling warned me that it wasn’t going to be the best of films, but I was young and naive, and was positive it was going to be the most brilliant thing since… Pixar?
It was her fault, anyway; she saw the motion capture being done about four years ago and told me about it, and I was a walking-talking advertisement for two years in sheer, unadulterated excitement. I was so delighted, and wham! Feelings dashed.
Digressing. What I found to be annoying about the Delighted Foot, was that everything was a stereotype. The characters were, and when broken down, the plot was just as predictable. I also found it quite fascinating that they weren’t quite sure of what story they were trying to tell: the first act was your typical teenage-flick affair, the misfit in love with little mister-miss popular, and then alas, tragedy strikes, and the film turns into such a religious fair that one is left back waiting for the cheerleader squad routine to start up. Then, wonders of wonders, we decided to make an environmental protest with such an unbelievable ending that eyebrows are raised! With tap dancing penguins. Protest! Penguins. Who protests with penguins?
I think the film would have been so much better if they chose one topic – certainly not even a Deep and Meaningful one, because as I shall reiterate, dancing penguins - and stuck to it! I suppose I may have also had expectations, as I’d just come away from Flushed Away only moments before (brilliant film, even better character animation!) but what I was expecting was, you know, a good film. The friend who I saw it with finished off the end of the film with a loud, decidedly disruptive shriek of ‘what the hell was that?’ and even I, as a respectful film-goer, was more ready to throw her popcorn.

What I also find rather interesting, is that the Oscar for Tapping Toes went to George Miller. Every single bloody article I have read, it went to George Miller for Happy Feet, not Happy Feet as an animated film. Damnit. You have to ask yourself one question: (Do you feel lucky?) Do you condone creepy people anywhere near the animation industry? Huh? Huh? You’ll start working for them, they’ll know where you live, then the phone calls start, then you wake up one night and they’re sitting on the end of your bed, making cookies….

[IF ONE MORE PERSON TELLS ME THE FILM WAS GOOD BECAUSE THE PENGUINS WERE CUTE, THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAIN. FIRE, BRIMSTONE, AND SATAN ON SPEED-DIAL.]

------------------------------------

[1] As an animation student, it is your duty, nay, your right, to see watch The Men In Black: Animated Series. This series was perfection. Beyond perfection! The intrinsic plots! The characters! The animation! The funny!

I’ve got the full version of the opening stored somewhere – I’ll have to find it. I’ve never seen a more genuinely well-done opening than this.

Animated Animation, Pt.II.

Continuing the trend from the previous post – minus the Square-Enix bashing. Putting it rather mildly, I get around when it comes to the internet, so I will try to post some things relevant to pre-production, but first and foremost, I must say that am an animator! Leaping from tree to tree, as they float down the mighty rivers of British Columbia. The Giant Redwood. The Larch. The Fir! The mighty Scots Pine! The lofty flowering Cherry! The plucky little Apsen! The limping Roo tree of Nigeria. The towering Wattle of Aldershot! [/Monty Python moment.]



There will probably be the odd Devil May Cry clip linked, because one of the things I think that is rather fantastic about the animation within the (game) series is that the motion capture actors do the voices too, and therefore a stronger overall character is created. (The actors for Dante and Vergil used to be Power Rangers, so… ending there. They're Mighty Morphin' something.)

This is an older, Devil May Cry 4 trailers, back when Dante was rather pretty and lacking in stubble. He has cowboy boots now, and they make me happy.
Why is this Linkable?: Dante has got a fantastic, weighted walk – most likely due to the motion capture, but walks don’t always translate quite well in an individualistic sense, and this is quite personality driven and stylised; whilst Dante’s face still suffers from perfection (what a tragic thing to suffer from), he’s still got great planes around his nose and brow and he’s expressive, there’s some great ‘huffy’ sounds and smirks; he’s bashing the hell out of a camera, he’s doing it well, and with old Rebellion/Ebony-Ivory attacks for DMC3! Apparently he’s not one for voyeurs. The newer DMC4 is worth a look at too if one is You-Tubing. Ignore the silly girl’s narration – it’s taken three games for Capcom to finally fall to ‘Magic Girl’ Syndrome, which is such a pity as Trisha, Lucia and Lady are diverse and fantastic. Violent too, but that’s a casino bonus!



I should have put this link with the previous SH1 clip, but alas, blonde moment. Bloopers! Alas, I doubt Team Silent borrowed the idea off of Pixar, as they’ve always been a… neurotic bunch.
Why is this Linkable?: They aren’t humorous ‘bloopers’ persay, but just contain some solid character acting. I’d just link this for the Lisa/Michael ‘blooper’ at the beginning, as the changes in Lisa’s expression are extremely well done – that the treat her as an actress pretending to be angry for a second before she begins to laugh. Cybil is another good one; Alessa has fantastic movement; Henry has some great realistic acting, and his face at the end! Yes-yes-yes! At any rate, I know that when I fall off things (a regular occurrence, let me assure you), I certainly do something similar, so I’m empathising on that one.




Silent Hill 1: CONTAINS LARGE AMOUNTS OF BLOOD ON PS1 GRAPHICS, BUT NOT VIOLENT.
Why is this Linkable?: I haven’t actually played through the first SH game (it’s impossible to find, and the hell if I’m playing it by myself), but her expressions! The movement! The subtle changes in her facial expression! It’s brilliant! For a nice, relatively subtle but emotive final-curtain scene, this is the way to go.



Silent Hill 3 has certainly got to be one of the more stronger demonstrations of great acting within a three dimensional medium. SH, like the DMC games, share the motion capture/voice actors, but SH can not be topped for face animation.
Why is this Linkable?: Once the character interaction starts - from 1.00 in and onwards – it just gets better and better. Whether it be with Heather and her father, or Heather and Douglas (one of the ‘good guys’, for the record, just not the best voice-actor), the facial movement is just so strong and, yes-yes, again, the acting! I also think Douglas has some fantastic texturing on said face, and Heather’s eyes are unnervingly lifelike. All cut-scenes with these two characters are incredibly well done and are well-worth the look.



Why is this Linkable?: An odd thing to link to – a music video! Contains the above Heather, and the vocals Mary-Elizabeth McGlynn (the English voice-actor for the Major for Ghost in the Shell, tv/films) and that is a delicious combination. If you’ve seen the SH film, the song in question was used over the credits, and this is the official… clip, of sorts. There are two lazy, lazy blocks of animation where Heather’s jaw is just being moved up and down, but the rest is so well done that it more than makes up for it.

I’ll have to see if the Silent Hill 2 and 3 concept videos are online, because it covers some fantastic, interesting and relevant stuff towards pre-production, especially about character design.

At heart, I’m a horribly lazy person, and so I link to another person’s hard-linking work and spoils. This one just has some roughs off the Treasure Planet DVD of Doppler (hands-down favourite Disney film – well, maybe next to the Lion King), with Emperor’s New Groove (second favourite!) roughs that I’d never seen, with Stick-Figure!Kuzco dirty dancing. The second link has demo-reel roughs and an off-site trailer for from Nocturna, a European animated film that is stepping up where the animated two-dimensional ventures left off, ‘cept, you know, original and good! I unfortunately don’t know much about the film itself, but I can appreciate some yummy animation when I see it. Supposedly coming out this year.

The Pre-Production Update Post coming up next! After I bathe. Always important.

THIS SPACE IS RESERVED FOR AN INN-ING.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, 'WATCH THIS SPACE.'

...watch it.

...watch it.

Ooh, you blinked! Monster.

The Animated World of Animation.

This is cheating, as I assulted the keyboard long enough to do this over a month ago. The analysis isn't incredibly deep or technical, rather filled with far too much enthusiasm of one sprouting a magnficient idea about one.pm and suffering from a wavering attention span a few hours later. I'm also feel a little guilty after seeing the FMV at the bottom of this image - it looks fantastic.

There were two close-ups on the faces of the accompanying characters - Zack and Angeal - and nope, still Ken-doll faces. It's a pity.

Having a quick skim over this, I think I'm starting to see glaringly obvious agression trends - preferences that I would like to put towards character design in pre-production. I want characters in strong, productive poses (especially the poor old wimmins) that demonstrate something about their personality instead of 'ooh, let's just look pretty!'; movement should reflect on the faces; I need to remember expression through eyebrows; I'd love to incorporate strong, distorted facial expression on characters, instead of just the obligatory closed mouth. I'm unfortunately not the most 'cartoony' of people - a trait that I'd love to work on, as I would certainly be a far better artist for it, but it is good to start with the little things!

Without further ado, and more babbling-thereforth:

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FF vs. SH Animation – An Unbiased Approached. (Or Not.)

This is Tifa.




Say ‘hello’, Tifa.

….

(She says ‘hello’.)

Through out Advent Children she bodily bashes, crashes and generally smashes the hell out of a lot of things, although you wouldn’t know it from observing this picture. It’s genuinely unnerving. Her eyebrows and mouth are neutral, and her eyes are completely dead. What is the point of her hanging off the side of a church wall like a frog on crack, if she has the expression of a corpse? Is she smirking? Is she down-right pissed off about her current state of affairs? For all I know, she’s considering what she’s going to eat for lunch. It may just be a promotional picture for Advent Children, but upon going back through the fight-scene demonstrated above, she doesn’t get much more expressive than that. The eyebrows move up and down a bit, the mouth may part in a blow-up substitute-human private-toy ‘oh’, but she resembles, and is about as expressive as a Barbie doll through out most of her scenes.

This, on the other hand, is Maria.




(Obviously, she says ‘hello’.)

Unlike Tifa, she is indeed standing in a neutral position – technically she’s turned in mid-pivot, but she’s standing reasonable still. Like Tifa, this is supposed to be highly reminiscent of a scene in game/film, but is often used as a promotional picture. Shall we observe the difference? Her lips are pulled back in a full-on ‘I’m-going-to-have-your-guts-for-garters’ smirk, her eyes are narrowed and slightly crinkled, and although her posture is loose; she is full of authori-tay. She’s as beautiful as Tifa, but in an incredibly different way. There is such a magnificent expression and emotion to Maria. Tifa, sadly enough, is just like a blank canvas, waiting for her expression to be put on. (Kind of like the rest of her character – badda-bing!)

Where did this insane slagging come from, you might wonder? I’ve been observing John Kricfalusi’s blog (creator of Ren and Stimpy, fantastically intelligent and observant man) for awhile now, and I’ve been trying to observe the problems he talks about in more modern pieces of work. While I have the odd disagreement with the issues he talks about, when it comes to most points he’s damn well spot on. What I’m whinging about today is acting and facial-movement within the 3D medium, she says as the introduction to her assignment.

Actually, I was just trying to clean up the sheer document and file mess that has spread across all aspects inside my computer (a friend is possibly convinced that no real desktop looks like that, but they do – oh, how they do), and stumbled across the above picture of Tifa. I have issues with Tifa’s character to France and back, but the shallow part of the brain is also mildly in love with her. Not as much as Yuffie, but she’s getting there! Her AC look is fantastic; the fact that she’s a woman that beats the crap out of things with her hands and feet is even better as opposed to the ‘magical girl’ type persona that Aeris-lisp has got-a-goin’ on, and the ‘oh-I-am-nothing-without-Cloud’ issue aside, I’m horribly fond of her. I was also a bit of a geek over the above picture until I was flipped on it today and had a moment of clarity, more so than the past. For such a supposedly lively character, she looks absolutely dead. I dragged out the ol’ DVD and scanned through the entire thing. Despite the odd moment (generally with the more comedic characters, Reno, Yuffie, Barret, Cid), it was like watching rubber dolls interact.

This is obviously my person opinion, but I think pretty much all of Square’s realistic works contain rotten, rotten acting – facially and physically. (This is not a point about their fight scenes. Let me repeat: No. Point. Fight. Scenes. Hola.) The in-game cutscenes aren't as bad - 'Kingdom Hearts' is quite good, all around - but this is something that has been driving me crazy since I brought my first Final Fantasy game. I do understand that acting within in a 3D medium is incredibly hard to do – but Konami, back in 1997/1998/1999 when they were making SH1, were absolutely nailing it, and have done so ever since. Western comparison – Pixar-films good! So today, boys and girls, I thought I’d demonstrate what I’ve been talking about, through the medium of video and picture! The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la!

[I don’t have the attention span to keep up this commentary, sadly, and I'd also like to add the following has nothing to do with the modelling and texturing, because Square has won that two-ways to Sunday.]

Let us first observe the fateful, heart-warming, and deeply emotional Cloud/Aeris scene from AC. Even as someone who adores the English version of AC in wonderful ways, Mena Suvari spends most of her dialogue being truly awful. For the record, despite normally being fantastic, I don’t think Maya Sakamoto does it much better. (Mandy Moore for President!) I do like the ‘why did you come?’ line, though.




When Aeris-lisp says, ‘you came’, you’d expect something to change on Cloud’s face, wouldn’t you? A flicker of anything? When Cloud replies with the whole ‘wah-mummy-I-want-to-be-forgiven’ bit, nothing but his lips really move, but oh-oh-ho, Cloud’s hair does! Square is a horrible fan of hair acting: Crisis Core is a case in point. The movement of Cloud’s/Zack’s/Sephiroth’s hair is not going to give us any emotional development, here. After all this time I will never, ever understand the movement Aeris is making when she says ‘by who’, and the creepy lips just move.




WARNING! SILENT HILL, AT BEST, CONTAINS AN MA15+ RATING. CONTAINS VIOLENT IN-GAME CUTSCENES.

This, unfortunately, is a rather long trailer (5:41), but it contains some down right fantastic acting. Please ignore the in-game scenes, as it isn’t nearly as nice and possibly a little bit disturbing. There is in-game Pyramid Head, though, looking amazingly different from his film counter part.
- Firstly, Maria. Look at her mouth, and how it distorts up the entire face. The way she tilts her head slightly as she’s talking (AND HOW THE HAIR STAYS TAMED, SQUARE). Her laugh, her smile – it’s fantastic and horribly, horribly unnerving. I love watching her lips move, too: even if the dialogue had originally been in Japanese, each syllable would have cleanly been enunciated. I love the slight crease along her eyebrows when she says, “I’m not your Mary.”
- 2. Mary, herself. While the viewer doesn’t see too much of her actual face, she actually smiles when the dialogue gets lighter, and everything about her moves in one smooth motion. Her movements promote the sort of personality she has, and you can even see her teeth!
- 3. James, guy playing with his face in the green jacket. Konami ain’t getting cookies for this one – after all this time, I’ve still got no idea what he’s trying to do there. Props to the modelling on his face, though – he’s got plains and dimensions, in comparison to Square’s blank canvas with relevant objects placed on top.
- 4. Maria, Not Impressed With James. I absolutely adore this whole block of acting/animation, whatever the hell you want to call it. Her face changes shape. The mouth elongates, the eyes narrow and widen – she’s moving, she’s goddamn pissed of at James, and the audience can feel it. In comparison, think back to the AC scene with Tifa snapping at Cloud in the bedroom – she’s passionate, but there isn’t much behind it. Any acting comes through the motion-capture and not really her face.
5. Eddie and James, looking fantastic. If you watch James’ face, he’s got the movements of a genuinely real person. Again, it’s all the solid, clean movement in the eyebrows. This is something I need to store away for myself, as I’m not always one with the eyebrows. Think Pixar’s 'Cars', and the movement of the cars’ ‘eyebrows’.
6. Maria, again – strong delivery of dialogue, and tell me you can’t feel how terrified she was. Her eyes widen completely, and that mouth! Compare it to some of Yuffie’s expressions when she nearly gets squashed by Bahamut, or the finale of the Tifa/Loz fight.
7. Eddie, being creepy. I adore his face. I don’t adore the fact that the poor obilgatory overweight guy slips into the psychopathic role - but his story is a fascinating one.
8. Angela’s ‘lost’. Possibly some of the most interesting three dimensional animation in existence. The entire face moves with the words, and she continues the motion and the scrunch and it’s unbelievably surreal. Yum.
9. James and Laura. Just compare the movement of Laura’s face to that of Marlene’s. SH2 came out right at the very beginning of the PS2 – there’s no excuse for Marlene’s horribly bland expressions.
10. Sexy!Maria. These characters are truly interacting and have chemistry! (That's more than I can save for a lot of live-action films, unfortunately.) Sure, the movements are wooden (compare to FFVIII, I guess), but their faces are so full of movement. That’s acting, pure and simple.
11. James and Maria, Ver.2. I forgot about the scene – it tops everything about. Her face, her movement, her sensuality – watch the perfectly timed movements of her eye-lids. Her hand! The slight smirk to her lips at the end! It’s perfection.




FFXII is certainly my second favourite FF game, but you’d think the facial acting would get better as Square went on, not worse. Watch Balthier’s face. Wait for the movement – you’ll be there awhile. All the characters faces look like flattened clay – Basch got off far better than the others. Point again that SH1/2 was made such a long, long time ago with fairly dodgy modelling, and just look at the comparison. Moogles are rather cute, though and yes, yes, we known the Strahl is god’s gift to man. It’s one hot piece of machinery.





Watch Tifa’s and Loz’s expressions throughout the scene. There is a bit of smirk-movement, Tifa looks like a blow-up doll at one point, but other than that, you wouldn’t really think they were having a bit of a life-or-death moment. Marlene’s still horribly blank.




Let’s get back to the good-stuff! 1997/98/99 era, here – this is the introduction to the SH1 game. As you can see, very, very little like the film. It’s no way near as good as SH2, but you can see where all the yummy roots came from. Cybil, the blonde cop, is consistently good; Lisa Garland, the nurse, has some fantastic bits of strong, emotive acting; Harry (protagonist) has some quality facial expressions. It’s excellent for its time – scrap the above, directly compare FFVIII to this. Astonishing difference. The brief scene with Lisa and Kauffman (Lisa is Highly Unimpressed With Him) is unbelievable.




Tifa is supposedly having a moment of clarity, here. My god, I’ve never seen something so flat. Yuffie and Barret compensate for the pain. Cid's a bit scary, but we love Cid. He's supposed to be scary.


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IMAGES HAVE BEEN CHOPPED TO RIGHT. NO PATIENCE, NOT WITH THE FORCE, THIS ONE IS.

Screencaps from the SH2-trailer:





The Pain and The Agony:



1. Dante is there for comparison – Capcom isn’t always that much better than Square, but at least they are fantastically thorough - the motion-capture actors are always the voice-actors for the characters, and so-on and so-forth. There is a nice little curve to his lips here.

2. This isn’t a bad picture of Zack, per say, but it’s pointless to do a pose, that, well, has no point to it. He’s confident, but that’s all you could say for him. I think he's happy? He has a gigantic sword - I'd be happy too.

3. Yay, pretty girls, blank faces. That hasn’t been done before – not. I know I’m using promotional pictures a bit here, but it’s no excuse. Yuna could look happy. Sad. Angry. Lenne could be the opposite of that. They’re not. It's tragic. Woe. Angst. Alas.

4. Lightning, as she’s supposedly called. PS3 engine, and they’re already buggering it up? She’s just dropped to the ground, is crouched on one leg, and is using the other to knock of the balance of about five men. My god, where is the expression? She should have her teeth bared at the very least! It just feels so lifeless.

5. This picture is what started the entire tirade. Another Square character. Looks identical to Cloud. Blank as hell, clay-doll face, no expression present in any of it. What I want to see here is something similar to Avatar, The Last Airbender’s Katara. There is a fantastic moment where she rams (Zuko) another character up a rock wall with her mad waterbending skills, and then everything slides into slow motion, her eyebrows lower, and she smirks. She looks powerful and pissed, and I fell in love at that very moment. It was magical. (Western animated children's cartoons! They're getting better!)

6. If I remember correctly, Balthier wants Vaan to follow him. Blankety-blank-blank. Like every other original person in the known universe, I think Balthier is a brilliant character, but he looks like a Ken doll here.

7. Ashe is possibility the most fantastic female protagonist to grace the FF universe. Well, since the PS1, anyway. I’ve heard fantastic things about Celes.
At any rate, she’s strong (emotionally and physically), fantastically indecisive at times, independent and most importantly, never once lets any silly male protagonist make a decision for her, ala Nomura's Previous FFs. She has a brilliant ending to the game, and I genuinely felt very sorry for the romantic side of her character.
SO WHY ON EARTH DOES SHE HAVE A FINGER ON HER NOSE, AND, IF YOU CAN SEE THE FULL SHOT OF HER, HAVE HER LEGS DRAWN IN AT THE KNEES LIKE SOME PATHETIC LAMB? HUH? HUH?
Ahem.
Ah, it’s a useless pose. It's insulting without expression.

To randomly finish it off, I was trying to remember any good bits of acting that I liked in AC. There is one line worth screeching off roof-tops – Sephiroth (George Newbern, part-time Superman himself!) says, ‘that’s too bad’, and he quirks one of his eyebrows and his lips curl. Victory!

There is very little moral to this abrupt story – [EDIT TO ADD: At this point I was being fed, much like a cow put out to pasture.] I apologise that it was a bit one-sided from the beginning, but with Square’s Ken/Barbie line, there is no competition.

This was attached to the bottom of the original post, and I consider it to be worth keeping: STEWIE FOR GOVERNOR.

Why One Should Always Pre-Production Their Posts.

I’m such an incredibly intelligent person that I wrote the tail-end of this post yesterday when I was trying to remember my username, and it was even before I even thought about the beginning of this post, let alone an end, and sleep just seems so magnificently tempting. To summarise:

- Pre-production: FUN.
- Dinosaur DVDs: DOUBLE-FUN.
[- To Gloat: I saw Walking With Dinosaurs live!
- The Irony: Despite the magnificent robots, the use of the stage and effects was like a year twelve-drama class on crack. It ended up being awful. Bugger.]
- Perspective in an Inn (try saying that two-times as fast): TRIPLE-FUN. WITH TEARS. BUT FUN.
- Learning: Affirmitive!
- Memory Bank: Full. Delete? Select - 8-12 Biology. Accept? Deleted.

I’ll make up for this pathetic attempt at a first post over the weekend! I swear on someone else's grave, because I've said enough dirty words on mine for the next decade.

Once the class starts to get into the swing of things, there will certainly be pre-production pictures/detailed writings/witty stories involving shaved goats, but I thought I’d also babble about live-action-animation-graphic novel industry from time to time, as they are all interests and end up in the big swirling pot of brain-goo, which, ultimately, goes towards pre-production pieces! Circle of life, and all that. I normally do fair amounts of babbling in the normal blog, from ranting to whinging to observations, so I might as well double up. Said blog unfortunately can’t be linked to until it gets a nice, solid G-approval rating, as my vocabulary can become rather creative on cue. Descriptive, too.

I’d also like to admit something scandalous: I wandered into the library today trying to pick up another Maya informative piece of literature (aka, The Agony and Where The Hell Is My Ecsctasy?), only to walk out with twenty-comic-books. I dumped them on the counter, and the librarian stared in shock, before making a wordless gesture in the direction of the self-serving machines. As a warning, don’t go to the library at Mt. Ommaney. I commandeered most of the good ones – there was the first volume of FLIGHT, and now it is mine! All mine!

…for a month. Nggkh.

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Technically, this could almost vaguely if-you-look-at-it-sideways be considered pre-production related as three were at some point and one is! The other just has pirates. The world needs more pirates. Just, you know, not any that act like Orlando Bloom.

1. To quote Zack Snyder, director of the film 300 at the film’s IMAX premier: "This flick has blood, violence, sex--the only thing it doesn't have is bad language, so I'll do: FUCKING FUCK!!!!"
TRANSLATION: “Ooh-ooh-ooh, we, like, kill things, and then we, like, stab things, and then we sexualise women, and since we’re so freakin’ cool, we sexualise women some more, and then kill some hideously deformed bad guys! And, oh, like, Spartans, in our misogynistic little world, like, aren’t gay.”
I can’t believe he managed to zap all the fun out of swearing! That takes some sort of talent.
Such a nice young man, too – does anyone in their right mind want this ape near Alan Moore’s ‘Watchmen’? Debatably emotionally traumatized Moore is already heartbroken over all the other comic-to-film adaptations, a lot of which were pretty decent films; if Snyder comes to pass, he’ll be threatening suicide off a mountain. Maybe he’ll take Snyder with him, and Frank Miller if we ask really, really nicely – better yet, threaten him with highly adapted, futuristic weapons! If the situation, is becoming desperate I’m also considering a very, very large pointy stick.

I know a lot of people think I’m genuinely insane when I stampede up to my soap box on Frank Miller article demonstrates his current port-of-call. I like to call it 'I Know I Am An Oscar Mayer Weiner.'

2. JJ Abrams is directing Stark Trek IV, in which we learn about the days of the Kirk and the Spock at Starfleet. One article was linking Matt Damon and Adrian Brody to the two respectively – it’s surreal, but Damon really does look like a young Cap’n Kirk. At any rate, I just find it highly amusing that the first time I found out about this, it was accompanied by a picture of Abrams at Comic Con, sitting in front of a large painting picture of, wait for it – Spock. Naked. Arms around Kirk. In a bathtub. I can see the tagline now: "Queer as Folk: In Space!”

3. Satoshi Kon’s US PAPRIKA trailer: At each and every single occasion I try to describe this, I end up babbling incoherently and flailing my arms around like a frog stuck in a blender. Susumu Hirasawa is the composer of the film, which speaks for himself. Everything the man does is perfection wrapped in gorgeous techno-babble! More to the point, has Satoshi Kon ever made a bad film? I’ve been watching ‘Paranoia Agent’ when the download permits – more Susumu Hirasawa! – and if a television program was edible, well, I'd... eat it.


29 year old Dr. Atsuko Chiba is an attractive but modest Japanese research psychotherapist whose work is on the cutting edge of her field. Her alter-ego is a stunning and fearless 18 year old “dream detective,” code named PAPRIKA, who can enter into people’s dreams and synchronize with their unconscious to help uncover the source of their anxiety or neurosis.



A quote that’s still be unnerving me nearly a fortnight later:

“Evidence that Japanese animators are reaching the moon, while most of their American counterparts are stuck in the kiddie-sandbox.” – The New York Times.

Ain’t it the truth.

[Beautiful, high-quality trailers - beyond recommended.]

4. This is a unique way to advertise a drink. Or a drunk, for that matter. Entertaining, but, uh, unique. 3D, highly textured, odd. I’m also sure that Monkey-Dog thing used to live in my cupboard when I was five, and I used to throw my shoes at it fear. He roomed with ET, and they would have baking parties together under my dresses. Spielberg owes me for nearly two decades of traumatized psychological therapy – I’d rather be locked in a room with the Xenomorphs from Alien that E.T.
Brown blobs should not be that creepy. Should. Not. BE.

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In Addition: Blooger as I've now dubbed it is rather evil when trying to play through its HTML. It's also not 6.16am here. I would be sleeping.